As a driving support apparatus mounted on a vehicle and supporting a driving by a driver of the vehicle, a driving support apparatus that notifies to the driver of the vehicle or decelerates the vehicle prior to entering a curve ahead of the vehicle that has been detected during traveling of the vehicle.
A configuration disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. H10-19595 derives a safe stopping distance of a vehicle according to a vehicle speed and road surface condition, and compares a current position of the vehicle acquired from a GPS receiver with road data obtained from a map database.
By this comparison, it is determined whether or not a curve exists within the derived safe stopping distance.
When it is determined that the curve exists, the road data from the map database is searched for a portion having the largest curvature.
Then, an output of an alarm or a deceleration control is performed based on an appropriate vehicle speed before entering the portion having the largest curvature.
In other words, as described in Publication No. H10-19595, when a curve exists in a predetermined section in front of the traveling vehicle, a part of the maximum curvature is detected from the road data included in the map database, and the proper vehicle speed at which the vehicle can turn safely is obtained.
Then, the output of the alarm as a notification to the driver or the deceleration control of the vehicle is performed so that the vehicle speed becomes appropriate prior to entering the first curve.
However, the curvature of the curve is required to obtain the proper speed of the own vehicle with the configuration disclosed in Publication No. H10-19595 and the curvature of the curve is acquired from the road data included in the map database.
For this reason, highly accurate map data is required to obtain the curvature of the curve.